Merci Bull Calf Review

Queyras’s book alludes to the shifting importance of place in North-American lives. In his 1993 book, Post-National Arguments, Frank Davey suggests that recent Canadian fiction is set in places as interchangeable as “post-cards”; characters inhabit a placeless, post-national space of indistinguishable locales that are the bland mortar of a grey global modernity. Queyras’s novel, however, suggests that place is becoming more important. For instance, Guddy’s dilemma about what city would best accommodate her desired way of life suggests that place matters: Phoenix is not Philadelphia, which is not Brooklyn, which is not Vancouver, all locales that figure in Guddy’s very contemporary dilemma. These places possess real difference for the characters, yet Queyras also hints at the source of such distinction: developers’ ability to manufacture urban lifestyle ideals that cater to distinct demographics. North-American cities now function as commodities; there are some, like Guddy, who have the ability to move among these branded nodes. Others, however, are confined in space, such as Jerry stuck in his basement apartment and Adel stranded on the social fringes in her trailer. Their very inability to pick up and move along is a reflection of their economic marginalization. While the book is largely about the ineluctability of the past, it also offers a compelling vision of our present.